January 2002 Cover
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Gay sex before gays
By
Michael Bronski
Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before
by Jonathan Katz
How to order
Jonathan Katz's Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before
Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, cloth,
$35) is a compulsively readable, provocative reconsideration of 19th- and early 20th-century male relationships.
Katz begins with Abraham Lincoln's romance with Joshua Speed (the man with whom he shared a decades-long friendship as well as, for three years, a bed). While Speed himself wrote that "no two men were ever more intimate,"
Katz doesn't argue the two were gay. Referring "to early 19th-century men's acts or desires as 'gay' or 'straight,' 'homosexual,' 'heterosexual,' or 'bisexual'" ends up, Katz writes, describing "their behaviors and lusts within our
sexual system," not theirs. Using many examples-- Walt Whitman, Harvard mathematician James Mills Peirce [see sidebar], and English socialist Edward Carpenter-- Katz argues that loving and erotic friendships between men
could exist in earlier eras quite without specific labels of sexual orientation.
Katz broke ground in 1976 with Gay American
History, and here he's uncovered some astonishing material. Katz writes wonderfully about The Slide, a male-male pick-up bar in late 19th century Greenwich Village,
and delineates the romances between older sailors and their "chickens" during the Civil War-- and you always wondered where the phrase "chicken of the sea" came from! Katz writes clearly and never succumbs to postmodern
jargon. He's careful to contextualize sexual acts in historical reference, but never avoids emphasizing their importance.
Alternately surprising, shocking, and satisfying
Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before
Homosexuality is a great contribution to how we think about sex, men, history, and our own lives.
| Author Profile: Michael Bronski |
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Michael Bronski is the author of
Culture Clash: The Making of Gay
Sensibility and The Pleasure
Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the
Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes
frequently on sex, books, movies, and
culture, and lives in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. |
| Email: |
mabronski@aol.com |
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